In-Situ Production of Construction Materials by Combustion of Regolith/Aluminum and Regolith/Magnesium MixturesProf. Evgeny Shafirovich, Christopher White and Francisco Alvarez, University of Texas at El Paso

— Resources available on the moon for in-situ battery fabrication — Can make batteries from in-situ materials by robots before humans land — 1.2 kw for a 2-person base — 20 square meters per person for horticulture (100 W per square meters) — abundant minerals in the soil and water at the poles — have a robust manufacturing approach — at least two ways of producing everything –can create electrical energy storage using only lunar resources and a production facility shipped up from Earth

In-Situ Production of Construction Materials by Combustion of Regolith/Aluminum and Regolith/Magnesium MixturesProf. Evgeny Shafirovich, University of Texas at El Paso

— ISS has mostly dodged hubcaps in terms of debris — The problem is not the hubcaps but rather the 50 bullets it dodges for every hubcap — More than 2,100 tons of debris in LEO — many of them are spent upper stages — Biggest issue – 72 percent of the mass is Russian — “The heroes here are going to be the lawyers” — Russian stages are mostly aluminum tanks with magnesium — Fork in the road — do we collect the stages and reuse them — or do we get rid of them — 1,000 tons of mostly aluminum in old stages

Polymer Palliatives — spray polymers on it, spray it with water — helps to stabilize materials — don’t need a lot of heat to cure — commercially available products — disadvantages — mass, consumable and vacuum sensitive — researching ways to spray polymers on the moon and to limit the mass involved

Sintering or Melting –Sintering is a method of making solid objects from a powder by heating up the material until its particles adhere to each other — Particle size, density and packing of regolith are ideal for sintering — Microwave sintering can be used — Use in-situ resources — One or all phases can melt — Depending on cooling rate, recrystallization will occur (material will be quite strong and not fragile like glass)